


Reunions

by ottermo



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/F, pre-s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: AU from series 2: collection of ficlets imagining how Mia and Laura might meet again after their parting in 1.8





	1. Café

**Author's Note:**

> While I’m on this backdating kick, I figured I might as well go all the way and root out these 3 Miaura ficlets I wrote for tumblr. 
> 
> They’re all canon divergent from 1.8 since I wrote them during the hiatus between the first two seasons.

Mia wipes a tray methodically, returns it to the rack, moves on to the next. Ed’s cafe has been busy today, but the tourism tide is ebbing out for the evening, and finally they can hear themselves think. He smiles as he enters the kitchen. “Have yourself a break, Mia. You’ve been working like a Synth.”

She gives a tiny laugh. “Hardly.” Tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, not meaning it as coyness but as misdirection, extra proof if he needed it that she is imperfect, natural, falling apart around the edges, just like any old human. (Any old human who’s been cut adrift; this part, at least is true.)

“Go on,” he says, taking the cloth from her, his fingers brushing against hers. Some days she feels sorry for him. He is sweet, and the same age she looks, and he gave her a chance when she had no references, but no human man has ever turned her head, or ever will.

Mia acquiesces. “All right,” she says. “I’ll take a cup of coffee out front.”

If she sits in the little staff room, she will have to drink it, but if she sits in the cafe, he won’t see her leave it to go cold, and better yet, if she sits on the patio outside, he won’t see her tip it away. She doesn’t like using the bag, empties it only when she has to. It’s not as if there aren’t enough other reminders that she’s living a lie.

Mia makes herself a coffee, not lingering over the preferences of tastebuds she doesn’t have, and makes her way through the cafe. It’s just as she’s heading for the patio door that she hears a voice near the front entrance, an anxious, breathy, “Mia?”

She whirls around, comes face to face with the person she’s missed most in the past year, a face she thought she might never see again, a woman she had taught herself to forget by degrees, because that was how it had to be.

“Laura…”

They are in each other’s arms in seconds, warm against the sea air blowing through the open doorway, tight against months and months of separation, fitting in the spaces as though this was what they were made for. Perhaps they were.


	2. The Best Hands

Mattie’s led away by Max as soon as they arrive at the agreed meeting place, the two of them technobabbling away about how they’re going to help Leo. Laura finds herself face-to-face with Mia, and she can tell her friend is worried out of her mind, though she’s letting her face stay brave. “Laura,” she says, as though this is a casual meeting, not a rescue mission. “It’s been too long.”

“I’ll say,” Laura agrees, and she closes the distance between them, encircling Mia in a tight embrace. “God, we missed you. _I_ missed you.”

Mia doesn’t reply; neither does she loosen her grip when Laura begins to, so she lets her arms return to their position. They stay there for a long time, until finally they melt apart. “I missed you too,” Mia admits.

“Well, we’re here now,” Laura says gently. “I wish it was under better circumstances, but…”

Both of them gaze off in the direction Max and Mattie had gone, and Laura reaches for Mia’s hand. Squeezes it, doesn’t let go. “You just wait. They’ll sort it out. He’ll be OK.”

She doesn’t for one moment think she’s convinced Mia of this, but she doesn’t know what else she can say, how else to ease the worries of what could happen to Mia’s son, to the child she’d raised as her own.

“If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s Mattie,” Mia says eventually. She gives Laura a tiny smile, just a shadow of the real thing. Laura thinks how privileged she is, really: that Mia could choose to display any emotion here, could mechanically present a facade to hide behind, but she’s letting Laura see exactly how scared she is, exactly how vulnerable.

The realisation stills her for a moment, but then she gives a light laugh, and says, “Whatever you do, don’t tell her that. It’ll go to her head.”

After a pause, she adds, “But you’re right. He’s in the best hands.”

Mia glances down at their linked fingers. “So am I,” she says, almost shyly.

Laura feels colour go to her cheeks, but she nods. “And me.”

 


	3. Rainstorm

Rain hammered on the windows of Laura’s Vauxhall Astra, her windscreen wipers working their hardest to give her some kind of visual on the road. It was the price Britain paid for the glorious sunshine it had enjoyed for the past week: a rainstorm, long and intense. At least, Laura reflected, it might break through the humidity, which had pressed down upon all of them, transforming even the cheerful, bouncing Sophie into a bit of a grump.

She dreaded to think what Mattie was like. Joe had picked a fine weekend to take Toby and Sophie up to visit her at uni - in this rain, they wouldn’t even be able to go for a walk. Laura had planned to go with them, and in fairness she’d managed not to work a weekend for a long while, but Fiona had called Friday night to tell her a massive breakthrough had been made in the Persona lawsuit. For any other case, Laura might have said, “That’s great, see you Monday.” This case, though, had the potential to blow the issue of human-synth relations wide open. Laura couldn’t risk letting anyone else take over as primary - it was her best chance of helping the Elsters from afar.

She’d phoned Mattie to let her know she wouldn’t be coming, the same night. Far from being miffed, as the old Matilda would surely have been, she was excited to hear about the legal developments, even giving Laura some hints about specific data she could look into now that Persona’s records were available for scrutiny. Thankfully, now that the Hawkinses _finally_ had a second car, Laura could work to her own timetable, crossing between the office and Persona HQ without needing to harass taxi drivers, or derail Joe’s plans for the family Sharan. They’d still have their weekend at Mattie’s, and Laura could concentrate on untangling what she could in the name of the Elster family.

Mia and her siblings were never far from her thoughts, especially during a rush of activity on the case. It wasn’t surprising, then, that Laura’s brain, fighting to distinguish anything at all in the downpour, managed to turn the vague dark shape she saw on the doorstep into Mia, just for an instant. She pulled into the drive, smiling at her own stupidity - of course it wasn’t Mia. It couldn’t be.

Laura exited the car, and looked again. Her eyes continued to deceive her - Mia was in _France_ , for goodness’ sake - but the figure on the doorstep looked so like her that Laura couldn’t help starting to hope. Hope and worry at the same time.

She circled round the car to the house, not even fetching her case from the boot, as she’d planned for an evening of poring over her notes. It _was_ Mia, she realised, and her heart gave a sudden leap. But the synth was drenched with the rain, her hair dripping and clothes sodden, and Laura wondered dully how long she had been waiting there. The little porch roof offered very little protection against the raindrops, which were coming diagonally, almost horizontal.

Laura sprinted the last couple of metres, and crouched down in front of Mia, unsure if her friend was powered up or not. “Mia?” she asked, anxiously. “Talk to me.”

Mia blinked awake - power saving mode, Laura realised. Only a slight outside stimulus was needed to disable it. Mia’s eyes were immediately filled with fear. “I couldn’t find you,” she said, urgently. “There was nobody home, I thought–”

“Shush, shush, I’m here now, I’ve got you,” Laura said soothingly, and was unable to resist throwing her arms around Mia, even though she was soaked with rain. “Come on, let’s get you inside and into something warm. You can tell me all about it.”

She helped Mia up, then fumbled momentarily with her front door key. Once they were inside, Laura ran upstairs to grab clothes - a pair of jeans, one of those oversized, woolly jumpers Mia had preferred when she was here before. The same nonsensical instinct kicked in that had driven Laura to equip all the Elsters with warm woollen hats, even though Leo was the only one who could feel the cold. Mia needed to be dry and warm and safe as quickly as possible. On her way back past the bathroom, Laura grabbed a large pink towel to go with the clothes she was carrying.

She found Mia sitting on the stairs, still looking frightened - Laura wondered if Synths could suffer from shock, and couldn’t think of a sound reason that they’d be immune. She sat next to Mia and set the clothes down in front of them, drawing the Synth close to her with an arm around her shoulders. “Hey. Whatever’s happened, you’re all right now, OK? You’re with me. Nobody can get to you here.”

It was a stupid thing to say, especially since she hadn’t paused to lock the door behind them, so anybody could literally walk in at any moment. But something in Mia seemed to ease at the sound of the words, and she shrank slightly into the curve of Laura’s side.

“You’re all right now,” Laura repeated. She reached across with her other arm, and moved some of Mia’s hair out of her face. The once-perfect black strands were now bunched into wet strings that hung all over the place, and Laura reached for the towel, beginning to dry some of it one-handedly. When Mia shifted to face her, she began working with both arms, and Mia’s hair quickly began to look more like itself.

“Come on,” said Laura, resting the towel around her friend’s shoulders when she’d finished. “Change of clothes and a charge, and you’ll be good as new.” She leaned forward and gave Mia a kiss on the forehead, almost before she noticed what she was doing. “Then we can work out how to fix… whatever it is.”

Mia nodded, and collected the clothes herself. She headed upstairs to change, and Laura went to look for a charging cable in the living room.

“Thank you, Laura,” Mia called after her.

“Don’t mention it,” Laura replied, automatically. Then, “I’m glad you came to me.”

The charging cable was exactly where she’d imagined it to be, and she uncoiled it slowly, to the sounds of the upstairs floorboards creaking as Mia changed.

 _Sorry, Fiona,_ Laura mentally rehearsed as she thought of the work that she’d planned to finish off this evening. _Something more important came up._

Some _one_. Someone much, much more important.


End file.
